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Female blackouts are happening around the world to show what the world might be like without women. But 'black' can be a racist word. Why not whiteout?
Female blackouts are happening around the world to show what the world might be like without women. But ‘black’ can be a racist word. Why not whiteout?
Women, white out your profile, don’t black it out – the same concept but less bias. A blackout implies there’s something wrong with black, and right now we have a white disease. So, #WhiteoutNotBlackout #BlackIsBeautiful #DarkIsBeautiful #NoMoreDarkIsBad #NoMoreBlackIsBad
If we want to stop being racist, we need to stop using ‘black’ and ‘dark’ as bad. No more ‘blackmail’ when extortion works as well (and is a homonym with ‘black male’ which shouldn’t be besmirched). No more ‘black market’ when you could say illegal commerce just as easily. No more ‘black sheep’ when renegade serves the same purpose. No more ‘the dark side,’ which is a cliché. No more ‘throw some shade.’ No more ‘find the dirt’ on someone. This is all bull guano (white shit, because if you are trying to convey the concept of ‘shit’ then white shit is a perfectly fine substitute.)
I am a language researcher. When I came to know that black or dark is equally bad in China, I began to wonder about the universality of linguistics.
Unconscious bias is rampant, and here’s a clear place where we could change perception just by changing the language. We did it with sexism. Secretaries are now ‘admins,’ chairmen are now ‘chairs.’ The visual spectrum does not confer morality, and we should stop making it do so. If we want to stem the number of dark-skinned people dying at the hands of authorities, we need to change our speech.
The consistent survival strategy of humans is that we evolve. Here are a good time and place to do it. #BlackIsBeautiful #DarkIsBeautiful #NoMoreDarkIsBad #NoMoreBlackIsBad
A version of this was published here earlier.
Image Source – Pixabay
Jennifer has researched written language for more than nine years, read over 100 books, is in her eighth year of Mandarin, and has compared cuneiform, hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs, Chinese characters, and more—all ancient written read more...
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As parents, we put a piece of our hearts out into this world and into the custody of the teachers at school and tuition and can only hope and pray that they treat them well.
Trigger Warning: This speaks of physical and emotional violence by teachers, caste based abuse, and contains some graphic details, and may be triggering for survivors.
When I was in Grade 10, I flunked my first preliminary examination in Mathematics. My mother was in a panic. An aunt recommended the Maths classes conducted by the Maths sir she knew personally. It was a much sought-after class, one of those classes that you signed up for when you were in the ninth grade itself back then, all those decades ago. My aunt kindly requested him to take me on in the middle of the term, despite my marks in the subject, and he did so as a favour.
Math had always been a nightmare. In retrospect, I wonder why I was always so terrified of math. I’ve concluded it is because I am a head in the cloud person and the rigor of the step by step process in math made me lose track of what needed to be done before I was halfway through. In today’s world, I would have most probably been diagnosed as attention deficit. Back then we had no such definitions, no such categorisations. Back then we were just bright sparks or dim.
Pathaan touted as SRK’s comeback has been in the news for mixed reasons. Right from the hype around SRK’s comeback and special mentions his body contours; yet I can't watch it!
The movie touted as SRK’s comeback has been in the news for mixed reasons. Right from the hype around the movie being SRK’s comeback and special mentions his body contours and even more than the female lead!
For me, it’s not about Deepika’s bikini colour or was-it-needed skin show. It’s about meaningful content that I find is missing big time. Not just this movie, but a spate of cringe-worthy narratives passed off as ‘movies’ in the recent past. I feel insulted, and not because I am a devoutly religious person or a hardcore feminist, but because I feel the content insults my intelligence.
But before everything else, I am a 90s kid who in the case of movies (and maybe more) is stuck in time as it wrapped around me then and the gamut has too hard an exterior for me to crack it open!
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